Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[Vineri]

Thanks, I think you're a cutie patootie as well.

Btw you are trying to trivialize grinding vs cash-shop .. but OK. Til next time !! =D

[SirCowdog]

There is no game that has longterm support that does this, at least none that I'm aware of. Every game with continued development includes post-launch revenue in some way, be it subscriptions, expansions/DLC, or cash shops.

Umm.... No Man's Sky, maybe? I didn't do an exhaustive search, but AFAIK it doesn't have and MTX or paid DLC or subscription. I might be wrong, but I think it just makes money of being a good game that's constantly received updates and new features with a relatively small team. It's post launch revenue comes from fixing the horrendous mistakes it made at launch, and continuing to re-earn purchases of the game through providing a steady stream of free updates and improvements.

[Edge-]

Hummm... Monster Hunter, I believe?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5..._HUNTER_WORLD/

Loaded with cosmetic DLC's : P

Umm.... No Man's Sky, maybe?

There are fringe cases like that, yeah. That totally fits the bill, but it's also not something that either looked like it was always planned by Hello Games. Those were more "surprise" updates than part of a comprehensive plan messaged early on around a steady flow of content.

[rhorle]

Once upon a time, those cosmetics were earned after a player unlocked them, within the game environment ..

So? You earn them with out the cash shop. Paying real money speeds it up. It really isn't that big of a deal that some stuff can't be earned in the game. You can ignore them if you don't like them. It is also similar to the model Bioware has used in their previous multiplayer parts of their single player games.

[Dhrizzle]

Loot sharing gone awry .. pick up the loot others didn't want, to junk up your inventory. Get enough junk go back to town to handle your inventory issues.

I'm not sure what this even means...

Elysium chests .. where? Oh they spawn later, sometimes.

They spawn at the end of Strongholds.

The video spent some time on cosmetic items... but you know what, those items should be unlockable as you play the game. It's stupid to pay for cosmetics in a game that is a Pay for Service style game. Da fuk do you pay for? Server space on a single player game?

Some items you unlock through an achievement style system. Some you unlock with Coins earned in games or the currency you pay money for. Some only come in the Elysium chests. Also it's not single-player unless that's really how you want to play - contracts, missions and strongholds all default to 4-players.

Ya OK, EA says it's multiplayer .. hows that working out. Is it really multiplayer? (I say meh).

Yes it is, people sometimes do single player either to challenge themselves or they drop difficulty to feel uber-powerful, but in general it's all multiplayer. How far have you actually got into this game because you don't seem to have much of a clue what actually happens in it.

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Once upon a time, those cosmetics were earned after a player unlocked them, within the game environment ..

Imagine everyones frown when WoW's tuxedo patterns would be only buyable in a stupid cash shop, instead of earned. Or Devilsaur gear at the other extreme. What if the materials were droppable, but you needed to cashshop the patterns? People play to unlock cool stuff. If the cool unlockable stuff is paywalled, why bother playing?

WoW has stuff in cash shops and unlike Anthem they are exclusive to the cash shop, anything that you spend RL currency on in Anthem could be bought with the in-game coins instead.

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Anthem is BioWare's baby, EA had minimal involvement.

It does suffer from something I consider typical of EA's developers though, over-ambitious design that threatened to go too far over time, get hastily cobbled together and need a lot of work post-release to get them working. SimCity 2015 is probably the worst example of this but Anthem is definitely up there.

[SirCowdog]

There are fringe cases like that, yeah. That totally fits the bill, but it's also not something that either looked like it was always planned by Hello Games. Those were more "surprise" updates than part of a comprehensive plan messaged early on around a steady flow of content.

I think it might be more that they're a smaller dev team without a giant publisher imposing things on them. They seem to actually care about their game doing well, so put their nose to the grind.

But you're right that it's definitely a fringe case, and they probably didn't plan it to go this way(especially given the rocky launch of NMS). But I think it's a good case to keep in mind. A fine example to show the community that these types of cases are possible. And that's something I think we all need to see in an industry that seems to be going to hell in a handbasket right now. So many games are full of MTX bullshit, gating, live service nonsense....all of which detracts from a game just being good to play.

I really wish it was the opposite. I wish games that had their fundamental nature warped by monetization were the exception, not the rule.

[Yunru]

Hummm... Monster Hunter, I believe?

Grim dawn does it better. A lot of stuff for a small price. But the worst game when it comes to dlc is this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3...Core_Fighters/
1267,29€ of DLC.

I find it strange that Ea didnt follow this path with anthem. But we will see in a week when people over-check the game and find new flaws with loot.
Also 350 jobs went poof in Ea. Gota cover up a failure somewhere else to please investors and give this game more time to get more people into a Anthem service trap.

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I think it might be more that they're a smaller dev team without a giant publisher imposing things on them. They seem to actually care about their game doing well, so put their nose to the grind.

But you're right that it's definitely a fringe case, and they probably didn't plan it to go this way(especially given the rocky launch of NMS). But I think it's a good case to keep in mind. A fine example to show the community that these types of cases are possible. And that's something I think we all need to see in an industry that seems to be going to hell in a handbasket right now. So many games are full of MTX bullshit, gating, live service nonsense....all of which detracts from a game just being good to play.

I really wish it was the opposite. I wish games that had their fundamental nature warped by monetization were the exception, not the rule.

Just dont play them. There are better games out there where they arent over-monitized.

[Onikaroshi]

Grim dawn does it better. A lot of stuff for a small price. But the worst game when it comes to dlc is this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3...Core_Fighters/
1267,29€ of DLC.

I find it strange that Ea didnt follow this path with anthem. But we will see in a week when people over-check the game and find new flaws with loot.
Also 350 jobs went poof in Ea. Gota cover up a failure somewhere else to please investors and give this game more time to get more people into a Anthem service trap.

Oh, that's not even close https://store.steampowered.com/app/2...imulator_2019/




8842.90 USD or 6774.55 GBP

[Edge-]

Grim dawn does it better.

Grim Dawn monetizes content via DLC and expansions. Would you prefer that to optional cosmetic monetization and free content?

I find it strange that Ea didnt follow this path with anthem.

Why strange? EA have clearly learned from BF2 that overly aggressive monetization doesn't sit well, and every game they've released since that reflects this. The only way this would be "strange" is if you still hold the view that EA is the nexus of all evil and can't do anything that isn't bad.

Also 350 jobs went poof in Ea. Gota cover up a failure somewhere else to please investors and give this game more time to get more people into a Anthem service trap.

Except these job cuts don't have anything to do with Anthem proper from the looks of it, no confirmation of anyone at BW losing gigs. These were primarily marketing and IIRC support jobs, and they mostly hit their Japanese presence (which is apparently now totally gone) and their Russian offices.

[Yunru]

Grim Dawn monetizes content via DLC and expansions. Would you prefer that to optional cosmetic monetization and free content?



Why strange? EA have clearly learned from BF2 that overly aggressive monetization doesn't sit well, and every game they've released since that reflects this. The only way this would be "strange" is if you still hold the view that EA is the nexus of all evil and can't do anything that isn't bad.



Except these job cuts don't have anything to do with Anthem proper from the looks of it, no confirmation of anyone at BW losing gigs. These were primarily marketing and IIRC support jobs, and they mostly hit their Japanese presence (which is apparently now totally gone) and their Russian offices.

In case of anthem, a expansion content would be much better idea (but it needs to be priced right) if you can get the cosmetics for free and you dont have to wait so it pops up on store.
Adult content sells Edge. Just look at Tera. (its cancer mmo tho)
As for jobs, they were removed to please the investors with financial report. I can see why would remove adds from Japan (as there is pretty small market and a lot of other japanese publishers), but not that much for Russa side. It will hurt them overall on some market. Less Anthem adds for russans i guess. And tech company market when it comes to stocks is very....strange right now.
https://www.nasdaq.com/screening/com...cap&sorttype=1

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ea/stock-report
They went down from 160 to 100. You can see this game didnt help much with a stock and they are only that high due to that free to play game.

02/04/2019 91.06 -- 5,976,360 Apex
02/05/2019 89.06 -- 10,431,280
02/12/2019 106.31 -- 31,145,330
02/22/2019 97.06 -- 11,614,140 Anthem
After this date volume went way down.

[Baconeggcheese]

Ahh, that's where they were... I've played it for quite awhile and always wondered how the fuck they kept doing it, that answers it.

They've done the same model for all the MH games and this is the first one with a cash shop. If you take a minute to look at whats in that shop and the prices, its definitely not what's keeping the updates coming or paying for the servers. I imagine that's entirely the game being the best selling thing they've made.

MH is definitely the exception though.

[Edge-]

In case of anthem, a expansion content would be much better idea (but it needs to be priced right) if you can get the cosmetics for free and you dont have to wait so it pops up on store.

Or...they could release an expansions worth of content for free. But I guess you'd prefer to pay for content rather than get it free? Would you complain about being "forced" to buy the content or how it gates the community away from each other?

Adult content sells Edge. Just look at Tera. (its cancer mmo tho)

...what does this have to do with literally anything?

As for jobs, they were removed to please the investors with financial report. I can see why would remove adds from Japan (as there is pretty small market and a lot of other japanese publishers), but not that much for Russa side. It will hurt them overall on some market. Less Anthem adds for russans i guess. And tech company market when it comes to stocks is very....strange right now.

Yes, as part of overall cost-cutting which is something companies periodically do. If they aren't seeing strong sales in either region, at least strong enough to justify a presence, why stay there? Why keep burning money when they could spend it in areas where they'll see better returns?

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ea/stock-report
They went down from 160 to 100. You can see this game didnt help much with a stock and they are only that high due to that free to play game.

02/04/2019 91.06 -- 5,976,360 Apex
02/05/2019 89.06 -- 10,431,280
02/12/2019 106.31 -- 31,145,330
02/22/2019 97.06 -- 11,614,140 Anthem
After this date volume went way down.

And if you kept going, they're now up around $10 since Anthem launched. So while Anthem clearly isn't doing big things for their valuation, it's also not hurting them. We'll see how it impacts their value in the next earnings call when they share more sales information.

I mean, you're going after any angle you can to hate on EA. It's getting really boring.

[rhorle]

It does suffer from something I consider typical of EA's developers though, over-ambitious design that threatened to go too far over time, get hastily cobbled together and need a lot of work post-release to get them working. SimCity 2015 is probably the worst example of this but Anthem is definitely up there.

Which is pretty much par for the course with Bioware. They have had issues with most of their games but the pro's usually out weighed the cons. Dragon Age 2 had a lot of flaws. The Expansion to Origins so/so. DA3 had a lot of flaws and I personally hated they multiplayer. Even ME2 and 3 had issues. And of course Andromeda which is essentially a proto-anthem.

Bioware just seems to think differently on a lot of things and can't seem to learn from their peers on what not to do.

[Baconeggcheese]

I mean, you're going after any angle you can to hate on EA. It's getting really boring.

That's the entire thread going back well before the game launched. And a lot of the media surrounding this game as well..

Its so odd that people can't let this one go. Its like hating on it is part of their identity.

[rhorle]

I find it strange that Ea didnt follow this path with anthem. But we will see in a week when people over-check the game and find new flaws with loot.Also 350 jobs went poof in Ea. Gota cover up a failure somewhere else to please investors and give this game more time to get more people into a Anthem service trap.

Come on. Those jobs being lost have nothing to do with the performance of Anthem. The industry as a whole is tightening up. And you have major players disrupting the status qou. Apple's game service (looks like mostly basic mobile games) and Google's stadia are going to change some things. Even with out those things jobs get lost.

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And if you kept going, they're now up around $10 since Anthem launched. So while Anthem clearly isn't doing big things for their valuation, it's also not hurting them. We'll see how it impacts their value in the next earnings call when they share more sales information.

Indeed. The stock is up from ~80 in December and recovering from the downward trend that started in July 2018 (was ~146). Anthem might not have helped but it hasn't hurt enough to out strip other gains. Or investors see potential still.

[chazus]

Odd Freeplay behavior. Anyone seen this? Virtually no world events, but I get a tracking marker to kill some random dudes. No mission or event, just a marker on a guy that usually drops a blue. Is it a new kind of 'get loot for killing guys' in freeplay, beyond normal drop rng

[Ophenia]

YongYea's take on the changes (patch 1.0.4), video released yesterday.

Loot sharing gone awry .. pick up the loot others didn't want, to junk up your inventory. Get enough junk go back to town to handle your inventory issues.

Elysium chests .. where? Oh they spawn later, sometimes.

The video spent some time on cosmetic items... but you know what, those items should be unlockable as you play the game. It's stupid to pay for cosmetics in a game that is a Pay for Service style game. Da fuk do you pay for? Server space on a single player game?

Ya OK, EA says it's multiplayer .. hows that working out. Is it really multiplayer? (I say meh).

Thanks for showing everyone you're the perfect archetype of the "I'm a fan of [insert random youtuber] so I won't have critical thinking nor will I validate the information".

"Loot sharing" has lasted less than one day. Elysium Chests spawn at the end of strongholds, as promised, and not "sometimes", but "every time".
All Cosmetics are unlocked "as you play the game". I have bought one full armor set (61k), a few emotes and animations (between 16 and 23k coins each), and one metal thing (~20k I think) without buying any Shard. You get way enough Coins ingame to buy whatever the fuck you want. Shards are just here if you're impatient or if you just don't wanna play the game (???).

But hey, Yongyea or whoever this dude is said something, so let's blindly follow his statement. Do you have his picture as you Phone wallpaper ? I bet you do.

[chazus]

But hey, Yongyea or whoever this dude is said something, so let's blindly follow his statement. Do you have his picture as you Phone wallpaper ? I bet you do.

I used to like both YongYea and HeelvsBabyface... But both of them lately are just like "Do you wanna talk about hating video games? I sure do." For whatever reason, bitching about everything gets the clicks.

[Yunru]

I used to like both YongYea and HeelvsBabyface... But both of them lately are just like "Do you wanna talk about hating video games? I sure do." For whatever reason, bitching about everything gets the clicks.

Its a known factor that negative news bring in more money than positive. (in this case clicks)
But bouth of them are right, even if their tone is more aggresive than the rest of the media.
A simple look at youtube likes/dislikes ratio tells all the story. Try to say anything positive abauth this game -- 70% dislike minimum.
Video game industry pretty much did this to themselfs. Media is bribed more or less (i remember watching anthem video of some youtuber that was called to play the demo and then asked to make a positive scripted video and he refused), pre realise trailers pretty much always lie how the game looks, games come out more and more polished, fun gets removed (blizzard loves doing this for some reason), pre-orders and much more.

You can easy find threads and videos where people check every single game flaw and people aggre with them. This game is under microscope like fallout 76.
One thing however that is new. Before that if some mmo realised a patch that no1 liked and they complained on official forum, they got edited/banned and so on.
News simple didnt spread. But now people figured out its pointless to use official forums and use youtube, reddit and other options to talk abauth the games.
And if some game developer/social media guy show up there, its gona be burned. Or even worse -- fired.

[kaelleria]

Odd Freeplay behavior. Anyone seen this? Virtually no world events, but I get a tracking marker to kill some random dudes. No mission or event, just a marker on a guy that usually drops a blue. Is it a new kind of 'get loot for killing guys' in freeplay, beyond normal drop rng

It's the Dominion Takeover event... Basically you have marked areas where a boatload of dominion spawn. There are some guys with slightly different movesets with more armor and shields that have a higher chance of dropping loot. Clearing out one of the marked areas still gives you a chest. It's just not communicated very well. There's also a challenge tied to it where you'll kill a Dominion Warden and get some MW embers, coin, and chimeric compound.

In about an hour of freeplay I got 9 MWs. Had I known about the chests in the first few areas I probably would have gotten more.